Notes
“Art and writing at the end of the 1960s had expanded into new kinds of experience. Almost anything could suddenly be labeled ‘art’—a pile of tires, a conversation, the sound of rain outside a window. Turning away from the heroics associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement—the grand gesture—artists and writers suddenly understood the actions of an ordinary life as a type of poetry. In addition to art’s expansion, the poem on the page expanded, the definitions of ‘media’ expanded, the frame of the picture expanded. Art and life, for a short time, became concomitant.
In a time before movie hotlines listed local showtimes, before psychics mapped out the coming year over the telephone, before phone-sex operators greeted lonely people late at night, John Giorno’s Dial-a-Poem offered up poetry for the everyday caller. The program changed regularly; one could make a phone call each day and encounter a different work by a new artist. Aram Saroyan stated simply: ‘Not a cricket / Ticks a clock.’ Joe Brainard recited a litany of remembrances: ‘I remember ponytails.’ Ted Berrigan reveled in the ‘[f]eminine, marvelous, and tough.’ Diane di Prima read her ‘Revolutionary Letter #7’: ‘Meditate, pray, make love, be prepared/ at any time, to die.’ Taylor Mead mimicked the sounds of a motorcycle: ‘Brrrrruuuumm, brruuuuuum, craaaaaash, craaaash!’
/ “Become Your Own Yawn”, Information and the Dial-A-Poem Poets by Katie Geha
